Supply Chain Snapshot

As stated in her own words, “Ask anyone about Lora Cecere and they will probably share that I am a woman of strong opinions. No denying the truth. I will never be known as a milquetoast.”

She has a background entrenched in the production and distribution of facilities for large consumer goods companies such as Clorox, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream (now Nestle), Kraft/General Foods (now Kraft Heinz) and Procter & Gamble, which is why CGT tapped into her rich experiences to learn the challenges and trends that are impacting the CG supply chain, and how technology can help overcome these industry obstacles.

What will the consumer goods supply chain look like in five years?
 Disintermediation and the forces of e-commerce will create a new value chain. Household products and food manufacturers will ship products direct-to-consumer and focus on service. This service could be meals to the home, acne-free skin, cleaning services, or family care diaper services. The consumer supply chain will know its customers and will automate against the full spectrum of the moments of truth:

1. List before purchase.
2. In-store experience.

3. Checkout.

4. Sentiment and satisfaction with use.
5. Landfill impact.

What are the key challenges companies will face as they try to get there?
Current processes are inside-out. Companies cannot listen and translate easily across internal silos and data is not easily shared. Consumer goods companies have made the functions efficient, but not effective. Marketing will need to become market-driven and sales efforts will need to be redefined to sell services. The leaders will have the courage to develop and test new business models.

What new technologies and processes can help consumer goods companies overcome these challenges?
 Consumer goods companies can look to the adoption of open source technologies to enable real-time data on massive parallel processing (Hadoop) along with blockchain (Hyperledger) and cognitive computing (see graphic).

Autonomous vehicles will move goods and smart shelves will hold the goods for resale. The use of these streaming data architectures requires the redefinition of analytics. While ERP will remain the same, the consumer goods industry is on the cusp of redefining decision support, business-to-business commerce, supply chain fulfillment and visibility.

Consumer goods companies will be limited by their own minds and the traditional activities that many accept as best practices — but are actually historic processes.